Page 18 of The Model Debutante
‘Really? How strange: I have always thought it a summer fragrance.’ Then Tallie realised what he was remembering – the faint traces of her scent on her chilled, naked skin in the attic room. And he was standing as he had then, close by her left shoulder, close enough to touch, close enough to smell her fearand her perfume.
Talitha turned so swiftly that Nick had no opportunity to step back, even if he had wanted to. He stopped racking his memory for a trace of an elusive perfume as a far more intrusive sensation than curiosity flooded through his body. Simple desire. Damn it, why had he not realised the feelings that Talitha Grey evoked in him for what they were? It was not suspicion of the secret she openly admitted to him she was hiding. It was not even his perfectly natural protectiveness of his aunt that meant he would take a sharp interest in any new acquaintance of hers.
His habitual honesty with himself answered his own question. He had been rather too preoccupied with another blonde young woman for him to have thought more clearly about this one until she had achieved this insidious effect on him.
Not that the two women were more than superficially similar of course. That exquisite nymph huddling in the dirty attic closet was shorter than Miss Grey. Her hair had waved in tresses shot through with varied shades of gold, unlike the straight, pale gilt severity of the coiffure so close in front of him now. And she had quivered with fear, unlike the tense fierceness that this young woman showed in the face of his curiosity or disapproval.
Nick shook himself mentally. He had allowed his imagination to drift too often to that naked girl. She had proved a damnably uncomfortable preoccupation, so uncomfortable that he had been tempted to go back to the studio and ask for her name and direction. A natural fastidiousness had stopped him: to do so felt like an extension of Jack Lynley’s behaviour.
But how had he been so blind as not to appreciate the delicious feminine charms now standing so close to him? That reproof about not noticing a “milliner’s girl” was deserved. And how had he failed to look beyond that frightful pelisse to the charming figure beneath? Lord Arndale ruthlessly suppressedthought of just how Miss Grey would appear clad only in that length of sheer linen and smiled into the defiant green eyes.
‘Naturally I bow to my aunt’s good judgement. Can we not call it a truce, Miss Grey? After all, immediately after you heard of your good fortune we seemed to be on good enough terms, did we not?’
Yes, he had allowed himself to relax with her, succumb to the image she presented of the innocent young lady forced to fend for herself by harsh circumstances. And he had let her lull his suspicions at the way she had reacted to a confrontation with a lawyer. The sensation of her pulse fluttering under his fingers returned and he clenched his fist to banish the frisson.
Talitha Grey nodded with apparent reluctance but did not let her eyes drop from his. They were standing so close that she had to tilt her head back at what must have been an uncomfortable angle, yet she made no move away from him. Nick was suddenly struck by the fancy that she was attempting to hold his attention away from something else, something she was desperate to hide from him.
He broke the eye contact, abruptly stepping back and sweeping the room in a comprehensive glance. Nothing.
‘Satisfied that I have not been stealing the silver?’ she enquired icily, stooping to pick up her bonnet and tying the ribbons with a jerk. ‘The truce did not last long did it?’
‘The truce will last just as long as I am satisfied you are hiding nothing which will embarrass or harm my aunt,’ he replied, trampling firmly on a desire to rip open that bow, toss the bonnet to one side and kiss the anger off her face. Then the image of those green eyes fluttering closed in passion, that firm mouth softening beneath his, that delicately curved body yielding in his arms crashed into his mind with the force of a blow and he turned abruptly on his heel to hide the shock of arousal.
‘I will ring for Rainbird. I regret that I am unable to drive you this afternoon, but he will call you a hackney.’
‘Thank you, Lord Arndale. Perhaps before you leave you would be so kind as to give me the direction of the bank you were going to recommend to me. I have no need to take you up on your kind offer to escort me: Miss Scott will do so, I am sure.’
Nick strode to the bureau, pulled a sheet of paper towards him and scribbled a few lines. When he turned Talitha was standing closer to him, her hand held out for the note. ‘Miss Scott? Ah yes, the governess.’
‘Indeed. My friend to whom you were introduced this morning. Doubtless your investigations will have unearthed the full list of her extremely respectable clients. Lady Parry has been so kind as to say that all of my small circle of friends are welcome here while I am staying with her.’ She tucked the paper into her reticule and added, ‘In addition to Miss Scott there is Mrs Blackstock the lodging house keeper and her niece Miss Blackstock, who is an opera dancer.’
‘Are you attempting to provoke me, Miss Grey?’ Nick was conscious that his strong desire to kiss Talitha Grey until she was whimpering in his arms was rapidly being replaced by the need to shake her until her teeth rattled. ‘Anoperadancer?’
‘Certainly. I am surprised your researches did not uncover that fact,’ she replied placidly, slipping past him as Rainbird opened the door. ‘Possibly you know her as Amelie LeNoir. Thank you, Rainbird. Good day, my lord.’
Nick threw himself down in the nearest armchair and stared at the closed door.Damn it.A little milliner with gilt hair and green eyes and a secret had undermined his self-control, his carefully-maintained lack of emotion and his confidence that he had his world, and that of each of his dependents, firmly where he wanted it.
And no bad thing either,he told himself, his sense of humourreturning as rapidly as it had left him. Bear-leading his cousin, assisting the failing Miss Gower, ruthlessly checking up on his aunt’s new protégée – he would turn into a sanctimonious straight-laced Puritan if he carried on like this.You need some fun, Nick Stangate,he told himself. Whether having Miss Talitha Grey in the Parry household would prove to befunexactly, remained to be seen. It was certainly not going to be dull. And if that young lady thought she was going to keep any secrets from him for very long, she was seriously mistaken.
That small stiletto thrust about the opera dancer had been neatly delivered, he thought appreciatively. Presumably it was intended to repay him for the remark about buying hats to which she had risen all too easily.
Amelie LeNoir.Could she really mean that she was friendly with an opera dancer? Presumably if she was the niece of the lodging house keeper she shared the same house – unless she was in some man’s keeping. No, even Miss Grey would not openly profess friendship with a kept woman. A virtuous actress would be a novelty, and possibly a convenient means by which to tease Talitha Grey.
In a very short time he was becoming addicted to the stimulus of provoking the flash of fire in those wide eyes. He would seek out Miss LeNoir and in the meantime he must have a word with his enquiry agent.
Neither Miss LeNoir nor Talitha’s secret had featured in the expensive reports which had arrived at regular intervals, systematically setting out Miss Grey’s career from respectable gentry childhood, through reclusive poverty with her dying mother to hardworking self-reliance. Nick disliked incompetence almost as much as he disliked not being in command of all the facts and Mr Gregory Tolliver was going to have some explaining to do as to why a Society matron knew his target’s secrets and he did not.
Chapter Seven
The next day Zenna accompanied Tallie to see first Mr Dover the solicitor and then to Martin and Wigmore, the bankers Lord Arndale had recommended. Tallie found herself expected at both sets of offices and at both of them found herself making decisions and issuing orders which, if she gave herself time to think about it, seemed the stuff of fantasy.
Eventually they emerged blinking into the watery sunlight on the corner of Poultry and Queen Street, an obsequious clerk at their elbow to hail them a carriage.
‘We were received with the most gratifying degree of attention,’ she observed once they were alone and the cab was crawling down Cheapside towards St Paul’s. ‘But I still can’t believe that I was sitting there making decisions about bank deposits and gilts and being lectured on the absolute necessity to make my will.’
‘You and your money were what was receiving the attention,’ Zenna retorted. ‘What a lowering thought that men who would have scarcely noticed us yesterday, hung upon your every word and wish today, simply because of your acquisition of wealth.’
‘That is the way of the world, I suppose.’ Tallie looked sombre for a moment, then smiled wickedly. ‘But reprehensible though it may be, I fully intend to enjoy it. We have been prudent and sensible too long, Zenna. We deserve a holiday.’
